I have read through quite a few threads talking about skill progression, with ideas such as unlimited skill levels and other ideas. But I also wanted to add a few points which I believe are also important.
Whilst playing Bannerlord I felt that my character wasn't exactly getting stronger each level up. After over 20 hours on a character, I decided to run some tests. I made two saves one with a new base character with low combat stats and one character with cheated max combat stats. Then I tested both in a few battles and I found that if I used good equipment my characters were both just as good at fighting. With my hundreds of hours in Warband, I found that there was no sense of character progression in the levels. Whilst even after all this time Warband still had a feeling of progression. It was difficult to beat a tournament in Warband at level 1 but I have yet to lose a single 1v1 duel or tournament in Bannerlord, and I used to always play with autoblock. (Just to clarify I made sure to be on "realistic" difficulty, no 1/3 damage and such)
With this in mind, I have a few suggestions:
Whilst playing Bannerlord I felt that my character wasn't exactly getting stronger each level up. After over 20 hours on a character, I decided to run some tests. I made two saves one with a new base character with low combat stats and one character with cheated max combat stats. Then I tested both in a few battles and I found that if I used good equipment my characters were both just as good at fighting. With my hundreds of hours in Warband, I found that there was no sense of character progression in the levels. Whilst even after all this time Warband still had a feeling of progression. It was difficult to beat a tournament in Warband at level 1 but I have yet to lose a single 1v1 duel or tournament in Bannerlord, and I used to always play with autoblock. (Just to clarify I made sure to be on "realistic" difficulty, no 1/3 damage and such)
With this in mind, I have a few suggestions:
- Have skills passively increase your ability to use there respective weapons and equipment and by using weapons out of your skill "difficult" for the character. Maybe tie it into the tier the equipment is. If I try to swing a tier 6 2H sword at low lvl skill decrease the swing speed and handling. Have the animation be of the unskilled type. Lower damage and such due to slower wing speed.
- Have perks add more damage and bonuses. When I 1v1 a companion I kitted out in the best gear even if they have 3x the skills I do it's still super easy to defeat them.
- Adding more minimum skill requirements. This ties into the second point a bit and might be an alternative. By having a weapon needing a certain skill to even be equipped also helps keep players improving there skills. Such as bows or riding requirements on horses.
- Having perks be more powerful and levels more important the ingame heroes will actually be more powerful. I fought a few at lvl 3 in tournaments and they felt so week even with there higher stats. Having them swing faster or knowing new abilities would make them an actual challenge.